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WHO DO I SAY I AM?

:
A CONSTRUCTIVE PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE
OF WRIGHTS PROPOSALS ON JESUS SELF-UNDERSTANDING
PENTECOSTAL ENGAGEMENT WITH N.T. WRIGHT
CHRIS E. GREEN
PRESENTED AT THE 40
TH
ANNUAL SPS MEETING

WHO DOES WRIGHTS JESUS SAY HE IS?

Introduction

Wright has made clear his disappointment that more theologians have not thoughtfully
engaged his account of Jesus self-interpretation.
1
He admits his proposals are unconventional,
but he does not believe they are entirely out of keeping with orthodox Christology.
I'm not claiming that the way I currently put it is correct. I just know (in several senses!)
that it makes very good historical sense, theological sense (within a very high Christology
and full Trinitarianism), and that it does not mean in any way a weakening of Jesus'
self-knowledge but rather a strengthening of it.
2


Wrights account of Jesus self-understanding deserves careful consideration, I believe,
and in spite of its weaknesses promises to prove useful for Pentecostalsrewarding both for
preaching and catechesis, the reading of Scripture and theological reflection. What follows is an
attempt to critique Wright sympathetically and constructively, seeking to make Pentecostal,
theological sense of Wrights proposals on Jesus self-interpretation and of the methodology
Wright uses to arrive at his conclusions.

Jesus as Israel-/Temple-/YHWY-in-Person
The basics of Wrights proposals are easy enough to summarize. In short, he holds that
the mature Jesus believed he had to live, suffer, and die as the agent through whom Gods
purposes for Israel and the nations would be brought about, exactly as Israels Scriptures
predicted. In other words, Jesus understood himself as one called to act as Israels messiah.
Everything he said and did, from his scandalous baptism in the waters of Jordan to his even more

1
Wright, Jesus Self-Understanding, in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald OCollins (eds.)
Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 54.
2
Wrightsaid Q&A for June 2007. Available online: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wrightsaid_June2007.htm.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
2
scandalous death outside the city walls of Jerusalem, arose from and was carried along by this
messianic self-understanding.
3

Over the years, Wrights opinion on these issues has changed slightly, if at all, although
he has experimented with different forms of expression. In his magisterial Jesus and the Victory
of God, Wright explained at length what in his view Jesus must have thought of himself:
who did Jesus think he was? The first answer must be: Israel-in-person, Israels
representative, the one in whom Israels destiny was reaching its climax. He thought he
was the Messiah. Jesus actions, his message, his warning, and his welcome, make sense
only within this framework.
4


He believed himself called, by Israels god, to evoke the traditions which promised
YHWYs return to Zion, and the somewhat more nebulous but still important traditions
which spoke of a human figure sharing the divine throne; to enact those traditions in his
own journey to Jerusalem, his messianic act in the Temple, and his death at the hands of
the pagans (in the hope of subsequent vindication); and thereby to embody YHWYs
return.
5


In the following years, Wright has continued to explain this in much the same way:
Jesus believed that Israels history had arrived at its focal point [and] he believed that he
was himself the bearer of Israels destiny at this critical time. He was the Messiah who
would take that destiny on himself and draw it to its focal point.
6


Recently, in his best-selling introduction to the Christian life
7
and his work on the Christian
virtues, Wright has reasserted these claims, even if in more popular terms. [A]s a matter of
vocation too deep for us to fully comprehend, Jesus believed that he himself was Israels
Messiah and Israels priest, and that he would therefore suffer that victory-bringing, obedience-
offering fate.
8


3
For another explanation of Wrights position, see Robert B. Stewart, The Quest of the Hermeneutical Jesus: the
Impact of Hermeneutics on the Jesus Research of John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright (Lanham, MD: University
Press of America, 2008), 90-96.
4
N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 538. Even before that, he had
given expression to these basic claims; N.T. Wright, Jesus in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. David F. Wright, et
al (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 348-51.
5
Wright, JVG, 651.
6
N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity,
1999), 89. See also, N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God Ex Auditu 14 (Jan 1998), 42-56; N.T. Wright,
Jesus Self-Understanding, 47-61.
7
N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2010), 108-120.
8
N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2010), 109.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
3
He believes that the Temple-theology of first-century Palestinian Judaism is in many
ways the forgotten factor in New Testament theology.
9
What might it do to our systematic
Christologies, he wonders, to make the Temple, rather than theories about natures, persons,
and substance, central to our reflection?
10
In spite of the fact that systematic theologians from
the second century to the twentieth have paid it no mind, coming to terms with what first-
century Jews believed about the Temple is the way toward a new and improved understanding of
Jesus,
11
for it was against the backdrop of Israels understanding of the Temple that the earthly
Jesus acted symbolically and spoke cryptically to define his mission and hint at his own self
understanding.
12
As a result, it is impossible to really grasp Jesus self-understanding without
first coming to think of the Temple as Jesus would have done. Omit it, and you will spend a
lifetime in titles, figures, and other unsatisfying by-paths. Make it central, and the whole
picture will come into focus.
13


Vocation, Risk, and Faith(ful) Obedience

Jesus, Wright contends, understood himself vocationally, which means he knew himself
as someone with a particular task to perform, a work to do on Gods behalf: He believed
himself called to do and be what in the scriptures only Israels God did and was.
14
Rather than
thinking of himself in abstract, philosophical terms, he understood himself as the bearer of an
exceptional calling, burdened to perform concrete actions on Gods behalf. Jesus did not know
himself as God the Son, at least not in the same way that one knows one is male or female,
hungry or thirsty. Instead, his self-knowing was of a more risky, but perhaps more significant,
sort: like knowing one is loved.
15

This riskiness is essential to Wrights view of Jesus and Jesus self-understanding. Even
if Christ lived with a vivid awareness of his uniqueness and the extraordinariness of his mission,

9
Wright (Jesus Self-Understanding, 57) suggests the Temple theology constitutes the deep Synoptic root of full-
orbed Johannine Christology.
10
Wright, Jesus Self-Understanding, 58.
11
In Wrights judgment, this Temple theology not only gives us a clue to Jesus purposes, but also to the mindset of
the earliest Christians, as well. See N.T. Wright, Worship and the Spirit in the New Testament in Teresa Berger
and Bryan D. Spinks (eds.), The Spirit in Worship-Worship in the Spirit (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009),
23.
12
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 46.
13
Wright, Jesus Self-Understanding, 56.
14
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 53.
15
Wright, JVG, 652-653.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
4
Wright stands convinced that his sense of calling was just thata sense, a faith awareness.
16

Christs vocation was grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized
over in further prayer and doubt, and implemented in action
17
Again and again, Wright
directs our attention to what he takes to be the outlandishness of Jesus self-understanding, to
what he calls Jesus great wager of faith.
18
By acting and speaking as Israels messiah, Jesus
was taking an enormous risk,
19
giving himself up in faith to a crazy and utterly risky
vocation.
20
While he remained unwaveringly faithful to his call, Christ did so with the
knowledge that he could be making a terrible, lunatic mistake.
21

Wrights Jesus is a man who lived humanly, from faith; he did not soar above the fray,
beyond jeopardy, but instead willingly, trustingly put himself at hazard for Gods sake, and in
remaining true to his vocation accomplished the ultimate fulfillment of the purpose of creation
itself.
22
God wins Gods victory over sin and death through Jesus messianic faithfulness, his
always precarious and severely-tested but finally unerring fidelity to his Abba.
As Wright sees it, Jesus matured into the awareness of his vocation through his own
fresh and prayerful reading of Israels scriptures.
23
To live faithfully, Jesus had to learn
obedience, had to learn the hesed that would make possible the completion of his task as Gods
messiah. As Christ matured, he became the fully developed human being,
24
and as this fully
developed human being, he gave himself up to do (and have done to him) as Israel-in-person
what God had promised to do for the world. In his reading of the Psalms,
25
particularly, as well
as Daniel, Zechariah, and Isaiah 40-55,
26
Jesus came to believe he was bringing the story of
scripture to its climax.
27
Over time, he recognized that he had to do Scripture-like work in his

16
Wright, JVG, 651.
17
Wright, JVG, 653.
18
N.T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 17.
19
Wright, The Lord and His Prayer, 17.
20
Wright, The Lord and His Prayer, 29.
21
Wright, Jesus Self-Understanding, 59.
22
Wright, Simply Christian, 118.
23
Wright, After You Believe, 109-110. See also, See, N.T. Wright, The Crown and the Fire: Meditations on the
Cross and the Life of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 122-23; also, N.T. Wright, The Last Word:
Scripture and the Authority of GodGetting Beyond the Bible Wars (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005), p. 43.
24
Wright, After You Believe, 131.
25
Without venturing down the road of psychology, we can claim as a strong historical probability that Jesus
regarded the Psalms as providing a further set of bearings on his vocation, not least as it was focused on his strange
royal and pilgrim journey to, and action in, Jerusalem (Wright, JVG, 600).
26
See Wright, JVG, 597-604.
27
Wright, The Last Word, 42.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
5
own speaking and acting.
28
This conviction carried him along, sustaining and energizing him,
especially during the climactic events of his final days in and around Jerusalem, events that led
to his death.

Jesus and Christology, History and Doctrine
Because so much depends on the trusting faithfulness of Jesus, on the fully human
dimension of his obedience, Wright finds it impossible to accept that Jesus knew himself as God,
at least in any direct sense, rejecting in no uncertain terms the attempts to make Jesus of
Nazareth conscious of being the second person of the Trinity as unthinking and pseudo-
orthodox.
29
Wright does so, he says, not to diminish the full incarnation of Jesus but to explore
its deepest dimensions.
30
In his judgment, if Jesus had known himself as God, then he could not
have experienced the events of his life in any recognizably human way,
31
and this would subvert
the purpose of the incarnation, rendering it finally inexplicable and inapplicable to us, here and
now.
That Jesus believed himself in some sense the embodiment of Israels God bound to
die for the sins of the world, Wright does not doubt. He clearly believes that Jesus knew he
was doing what Scripture says only YHWY can do and behe just wants to rethink what
knowing means in such a context. He wants to call into question the notion that Jesus thought
of himself as the second person of the Trinity or God incarnate in the way most Christian
theologians have assumed.
32
As he puts it, he wants to know Jesus from Jesus own point of
view, rather than seeking to understand him exclusivelyor primarilythrough the lens of the
churchs theological and dogmatic witness. Wright is confident that biblical theology of this kind
can cast new light on the dogmatic tradition, and even correct it, at points.
we need to see far more open exchange between serious historical exegesisnot done
in a corner or by bracketing out questions of meaning, doctrine, and life but instead

28
Jesus thus does, climactically and decisively, what scripture had in a sense been trying to do: bring Gods fresh
Kingdom-order to Gods people and thence to the world. He is, in that sense as well as others, the Word made flesh
(Wright, The Last Word, 43).
29
Wright, JVG, 653.
30
Wright, Simply Christian, 118.
31
Wright, Simply Christian, 118. The tell-tale example, of course, is the agony in Gethsemane.
32
In his own words, Wright (Jesus and the Identity of God, 51) insists I cannot think that an orthodox
christology, which takes Jesus humanity at least as seriously as Chalcedon did, can avoid asking how Jesus could
think thoughts like that precisely as a second-Temple Jew? Unless we are prepared to address the question in those
terms we are simply being Apollinarian, producing a Jesus with a human body but a divine mind. And the New
Testaments own christology forbids me to suppose that such a hybrid does justice to God, to Jesus, or to salvation.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
6
engaging with the realities of which the text speaksand a dogmatic theology that itself
remains open to being told that it has misread some of its own key texts. This, in other
words, will be a dogmatic theology that itself does not hide in a corner or bracket out
questions of history, text, and original sense.
33


What is more, Wright believes that the church has from the second century or so made
the mistake of trying to fit Jesus into an already-formulated philosophical notion of God.
34
This
is a result, he argues, of the church losing contact with its Jewishness, deciding instead for the
language and conceptual framework of ancient Hellenistic philosophy. Reading Scripture
through this alien philosophical grammar, then, Christian theology bit by bit has set loose to the
actuality of Jesus, to his Jewishness, to his own aims and objectives. The traditional reading of
the messianic title Son of God (touv uiouv touv qeouv) as straightforwardly Nicene Christology
serves Wright as an example of this loss of contact with Jesus Jewishness.
35
Sometimes, Wright
talks in bold terms, as if this Hellenization of the Christian message effectively destroyed the
possibility of reading the Gospels rightly.
The Great Tradition has seriously and demonstrably distorted the gospels. Eager to
explain who God really was, the church highlighted Christology; wanting to show that
Jesus was divine, it read the Gospels with that as the question; looking for Jesus divinity,
it ignored other central themes such as the kingdom of God.
36


Wright calls for a different approach, one that pushes through to the thought-world of ancient
Judaism, to what Jesus believed about himself and his ministry.
Unless we can give some sort of account of Jesus' own self-understanding, I simply don't
think it's good enough to talk about two minds (or one), two natures (or one), or about the
various combinations and permutations of persons and substances. Any such discussions
should be grounded in Jesus himself.
37


If we want to know here and now what it means to say Jesus saves, then Wright contends we
must discover what Jesus was up to then and there, what he and his contemporaries understood
him to be doing: that is where we must look for it and not somewhere else. We may call
ourselves orthodox, Wright says, but we might as well go back and shake hands with Rudolph

33
See N.T. Wright, Reading Paul, Thinking Scripture in Markus Bockmuehl and Alan J. Torrance (eds.),
Scriptures Doctrine and Theologys Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2008), 71.
34
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 54.
35
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 48.
36
N.T. Wright, Response to Richard Hays, in Nicholas Perrin and Richard B. Hays (eds.) Jesus, Paul, and the
People of God: a Theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 63.
37
Wright, Jesus Self-Understanding, 53.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
7
Bultmann if we boast a Christology not grounded in the first-century significance of such
notions as kingdom of God and son of man. Without this historical knowledge, we might as
well substitute the word enlightenment for the first and the word superman for the second,
he insists.
38
In other words, Wright
39
does not want to trade in the language and concepts of the
Nicene tradition, but in the currency of ancient Palestinian Judaism.
It is hardly an exaggeration to call Wright a crusader against what he deems non- or
weakly-historical accounts of Jesus. At the 2008 Society of Biblical Literature meeting in
Atlanta, Wright excoriated the essays in Seeking the Identity of Jesus (a book coedited by
Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Wrights good friend of twenty-five years, Richard Hays) for what
he deemed its woefully insufficient attention to first-century Palestinian Judaism and over-
dependence on traditional Christian dogmas.
40
In Wrights judgment, the various contributions in
the volume added up to nothing more than a pseudo-theological project of non-historical
retrieval of Jesus.
41
In the light cast by outbursts like these, one can only assume that Wright
suspects that any and all attempts to speak of Jesus identity in the idiom of the churchs
theological tradition are in fact guilty of playing fast-and-loose with the facts of the record.
This does not mean Wright has no use for theology, only that, as Matthew Levering
explains, he remains deeply suspicious of speculative theology, instead calling for a narrative
theology that seeks insight into Israels God by retelling the story of Israel and placing Jesus
within that story, as does the biblical narrative.
42
This does not put Wright in bad company.
What R.R. Reno says of Irenaeus applies in basic ways to Wright, as well. Arranging the
details of Scripture is not prerequisite to theology, a necessary first step; it simply is theology.
That is to say, theology is the name of the work of draw[ing] the diffuse elements of Scripture
into ever closer and more intimate interconnections. Theology, then, defines the intellectual
task of expounding the whole picture.
43
Where Wright departs from Irenaeusand perhaps

38
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 50.
39
At least, Wright the Jesus scholar. This is arguable not true of Wright the preacher.
40
See Richard B. Hays, Knowing Jesus: Story, History and the Question of Truth in Perrin and Hays (eds.) Jesus,
Paul, and the People of God, 42-43.
41
Quoted in Hays, Knowing Jesus, 43.
42
Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2004), 112.
43
R.R. Reno, Biblical Theology and Theological Exegesis in Craig Bartholomew, Mary Healy, Karl Moller, and
Robin Parry (eds.) Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004),
403-04.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
8
goes wrongis that he does not read Scripture in harmony with the regula fideiat least, that is
not a concern he seems to share with other biblical theologians like Irenaeus.
To be fair, Wright does not suggest the churchs dogmas should be rejected out of hand.
He does celebrate the use of the creeds in Christian worship,
44
and understands this confession as
basic to his own way of life. He sometimes appeals to and celebrates the creeds narrative
structure, going so far sometimes as to describe creeds as portable stories that in fact bear the
imprint of deep fidelity to the Gospel tradition.
45
He sees the creeds, specifically, and Christian
doctrine, generally, as enabling the church to make manageable the big picture of Scripture.
What is more, some think Wrights description of Jesus is not only consonant with the creedal
tradition, but in fact provides support for the creeds truthfulness and legitimacy!
46

What, then, are we to make of Wrights frequent, often withering criticisms of the
Christian theological tradition? Wright is critical of the creeds because they do not afford
sufficient attention to Jesus and Israels story. He feels that by leaping from born of a virgin to
suffered under Pontius Pilate, the creeds fail to do justice to the place of Jesus public career,
and especially to his proclamation of Gods Kingdom.
47
Also, they take up a language and
conceptual framework different from that used by the biblical authors.
if it is in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth that the living, saving God is revealed,
[then] that means that John and Paul themselves would urge us to consider Jesus
himselfnot merely by asking about the hypostatic union and the like (we can be sure
that Jesus of Nazareth would have found that puzzling!), or by cleaning up the categories
of Aquinas, Calvin, or anyone else, but by enquiring once more about the worldview and
mindset of a first-century Jew possessed of a particular vocation.
48



44
See, for example, N.T. Wright, For All Gods Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1997), 31; also, Wright, Simply Christian, 209.
45
Its fascinating that the creeds are not a list of fifteen dogmas to be believed but actually a story which begins
with God as Creator and with creation, then proceeds with Jesus Christ, then develops and tells the story of Jesus
Christ, and then proceeds to the life of the church and the eschaton. So the fact that the creeds fall into a narrative
framework is not accidental, and I would say it is a sign of their deep fidelity to the essential Gospel tradition
Quoted in Mark M. Mattison, An Evening Conversation on Jesus and Paul with James D.G. Dunn and N.T.
Wright; available online: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Dunn_Wright_Conversation.pdf. See also, N.T. Wright,
Reading Paul, Thinking Scripture, in Scriptures Doctrine and Theologys Bible: How the New Testament Shapes
Christian Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 59-71.
46
For example, Carey C. Newman (Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: a Critical Assessment of N.T. Wrights Jesus
and the Victory of God [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999], 59) concludes, If Wright is correct, then the later
christological formulas of the orthodox creeds can be recognized as legitimate developments of a basic theological
intuition that traces back to Jesus.
47
N.T. Wright, For All the Saints?: Remembering the Christian Departed (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing,
2003), 57.
48
Wright, Jesus Self-Understanding, 52.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
9
His own historical Jesus study has transformed the ways in which he reads the churchs
confessions. After fifteen years of serious historical Jesus study, I still say the creed ex animo;
but I now mean something very different by it, not least by the word god itself. The portrait has
been redrawn.
49
Recently, he put it even more forcefully: I believe in the creeds. But I believe
in the Jesus of the Gospels a good deal more.
50

While he will not reject the creeds out of hand, Wright finds in the New Testament an
incipient trinitarian theology that works apart from any of the technical terms that later
centuries would adopt for the same purpose. In fact, once historical-critical research has shown
how this incipient trinitarianism works, we discover that it actually does the job considerably
better than the later formulations.
51
By contrast, Chalcedon smells a bit like a confidence
trick.
52
Patristic Christology had to work so hard to express the truth because the fathers worked
with one hand, the biblical one, tied behind their backs. From that time, Christian theology has
been playing away from home, attempting to express Christian truth in non-biblical patristic
formulations.
53
Wright hopes to reverse that trend, to free up the Scriptures from these
formulations.

Questions of Truth and Method
Wright comes to his conclusions by means of a particular methodology, which he defends
at considerable length.
54
In sketch, it works something like this: on the strength of his knowledge
of Second Temple Judaism and the Old Testament Scriptures coupled with a synthetic reading of
the (Synoptic) Gospels,
55
he constructs a hypothetical model of Jesus ministry, teasing out in
detail how first-century Jews would have made sense of Jesus words and symbolic actions.

49
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 55.
50
N.T. Wright, Response to Richard Hays in Perrin and Hays (eds.), Jesus, Paul, and the People of God, 64.
51
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 46. Emphasis added.
52
Wright admits this is an overstatement, but insists it is necessary to make the point heard.
53
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 46.
54
N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 29-144. He also
provides an abbreviated explanation of his method in JVG, 137-144.
55
Some protest that Johns Gospel presents a very different Jesus, but Wright wants to argue otherwise. For
example, he does not take Jesus prayer for the Father to glorify him with the glory he shared with the Father
before the world was (Jn 17.4-5) as evidence that Jesus was aware of a pre-incarnate existence, but holds that
this prayer, too, is an extraordinary statement of faith and vocation, revealing that Jesus knew deep within
himself that this meant he was the expression, the embodiment, even the incarnation, of the one true God. N.T.
Wright, Reflecting the Glory: Meditations for Living Christs Life in the World (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress,
1998), 138
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
10
From that, he works back to discover in the text of the Gospels Jesus mindset or worldview, i.e.
the underlying and motivating beliefs, aims, and intentions that energized and directed Jesus
ministry. Having discovered these, he works even further back to Jesus own self-
understanding.
56
In his view, this remains a rather straightforward projecteven if it requires
meticulous research, keen discernment and innovative thinking all along the wayand the re-
construction of a true-to-life representation of the historical Jesus, the drawing of a critically
verifiable, and so credible picture
57
is far from impossible.
In JVG, Wright draws a striking, telling analogy, playing on Jesus most famous parable.
He takes the wastrel son to represent those who have adopted a historical consciousness made
possible by the questions of the Enlightenment, and the older son to represent would-be
orthodox Christians who have never troubled much with history.
58
These modern elder
brothers do not care for a portrait, Wright says, because they are happy with an icon, and
they are angry and suspicious whenever someone insists a picture can be had.
59
Wright, for
his part, intends to have a picture, and to make that picture central to the reading of the
Gospels and the preaching of the good news. All readers of the Gospels have a mental picture of
who Jesus was, what he was thinking, what he was like.
60
His own agenda is to make this
mental picture correspond as closely as possible to the historical truth.
The point of having Jesus at the centre is that one has Jesus: not a cypher, a strange
silhouetted Christ-figure, nor yet an icon, but the one Jesus the New Testament writers
knew, the one born in Palestine in the reign of Augustus Caesar, and crucified outside
Jerusalem
61


As Wright sees it, this requires him not only to set loose to the churchs dogma, but also
to get behind the biblical texts themselves. We will [not] know who the Jesus of the text of the
Gospels actually was and is unless we go behind the text and find out what it actually
means. Anticipating criticism, Wright refuses to accept that going behind the text is a violation
of the texts intentions. His historical reconstruction is an attempt to grapple with the

56
See Stewart, The Quest of the Hermeneutical Jesus, pp. 88-89; Wright works this methodology out in great detail
in his New Testament and the People of God, and offers an abbreviated explanation in JVG, 137-144.
57
I propose, as a matter of history, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of a vocation: a vocation, given him by
the one he knew as father, to enact in himself what, in Israels scriptures, God had promised to accomplish all by
himself (Wright, JVG, 653).
58
Wright, JVG, 9.
59
He adds (JVG, 9), The Divine Saviour to whom they pray has only a tangential relationship to first-century
Palestine, and they intend to keep it that way.
60
Wright, Response to Richard Hays, 63.
61
Wright, JVG, 10-11.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
11
significance of the Gospels, not to evade them. The Gospels, he insists, tell that Jesus wrestled
with questions of vocation and mission, and went off frequently to pray. It is not going behind
their backs to inquire what that wrestling was about and what conclusions Jesus came to.
62

In all of this, Wright shows how much he shares in common with many of his opponents
in the biblical studies guild. Although he remains unrelentingly critical of source- and form-
criticism, he nonetheless celebrates the ambition to get at the historical events that gave rise to
the writing of the Gospels:
Just as the Renaissance by its study of Greek enabled Erasmus and others to go behind
the Vulgate and discover meanings in the NT which nobody had suspected and which
proved quite revolutionary, so I believe that the explosion of study of Second Temple
Judaism in our day enables us to go behind the received ways in which we have
understood the words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters of the NT. We are enabled to
discover meanings in our beloved Gospels, and hence meanings in our beloved Jesus,
which we had never suspected and which may again prove quite revolutionary.
63


He harbors no uncertainties about the value of the history of Jesus life in relation to the
theological and hermeneutical task,
64
insisting that history is part of Gods good creation and
hence historical research is part of our God-given cultural mandate.
65
Good historical
investigation in fact is the only way to clear away the overgrown thickets of misunderstanding,
misreading, sheer bad history, and sometimes willful obfuscation, that have distorted readings
of the Gospels and kept the truly important questions obscured.
66
Therefore, historical study is
not merely a possibly helpful source for theology but nothing less than a vital and non-
negotiable resource. It is not just part of the possible bene esse, but of the esse itself. This is
so, he maintains, because without that kind of work, we condemn ourselves to talking about
abstractions, even perhaps to making Jesus himself an abstraction.
67


Conclusions

Summing up, we can say Wright stands convinced that Jesus of Nazareth lived and
worked from a messianic consciousness, a sense of vocation. Wrights own Christologyand

62
Wright, Response to Richard Hays, 63.
63
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 51.
64
Wright, JVG, 15-16.
65
Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, 50.
66
N.T. Wright, Jesus Resurrection and Christian Origins. Available online:
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm.
67
Wright, Jesus Self-Understanding, 59.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
12
that of course is what his account of the historical Jesus amounts tostresses the riskiness of
Jesus life, his radical faith and almost-unimaginable readiness to venture everything for the sake
of the one he called Father. Although he in fact was the co-equal, co-eternal Son, he did not
think of himself or his mission in such abstracted termsand could not have. Instead, Jesus
made sense of his calling and his personal identity in the language of the Temple theology of his
day, which, if rightly understood, remains consonant with the high Christology of the Christian
theological tradition, even if it does not adhere to it precisely. Christ is known most truly when
the Gospels are read and understood in the language and concepts of Palestinian Judaism;
therefore, contemporary Christians need not feel bound to the Hellenistic categories taken up by
the Nicene tradition.


WHAT TO DO WITH WRIGHTS JESUS?:
A PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE

Introduction

Wrights reconstruction of Jesus is at many points unconventional, as he himself
acknowledges, and ignites a storm of questions. Many of his proposals are rich with possibility,
but it is impossible to put them to use without at least attempting to address some of these
questions. Is it wise even to attempt to think about Jesus self-understanding?
68
Even if it is, has
Wright gone about it in a way other Christians can imitate in good conscience? Or has he tied the
gospel truth too closely to his own research, his own questions and answers?
69
Does he or does
he not overestimate the possibility of reconstructing a reliable picture of the historical Jesus?
Even if not, is the attempt to draw such a portrait theologically justifiable? Has Wright
overplayed the Hellenization of apostolic Christianity? What are the implications of his
dismissal of the history of the churchs readings of the Gospels? In methodologically going
behind the Gospels and holding at arms length the Christian theological tradition and history
of interpretation does he not betray an unbaptized epistemology, an imagination not entirely
gospelized?

68
Ramm (An Evangelical Christology: Ecumenic and Historic [Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1999], 57)
says thinking about Jesus self-interpretation leads nowhere but heresy; it simply is beyond our rationality, and
should be revered for the mystery it is.
69
Hays (Knowing Jesus, 57) asks exactly this question.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
13

Evaluating Wrights Methodology

Of Pictures and Icons: The Possibility of and Need for Historical Jesus Studies

By his own testimony, Wright wants something more than an iconic construal of Jesus,
i.e. a description of Jesus in religious and dogmatic terms. In its place, he wants what he
considers the real thing,
70
a picture that presents Jesus from Jesus own point of view. This
positions him on what seems to me treacherous ground, above all because it brings into
questionif it does not in fact denyboth the primacy and sufficiency of Word and Sacrament
and the final, canonical form of the scriptural text. Not to put too fine a point on it, but perhaps
Wrights attempt to picture Jesus amounts to a violation of the biblical prohibition of graven
images? When it comes to Jesus, perhaps icons are truer than pictures? At its best, Wrights
historical work on Jesus and his world brilliantly backlights the Gospels for us. At times,
however, it perhaps runs the risk of shifting the lights off of the Gospels altogether, spotlighting a
figure off stage.

The Purposes of God and (Mis)Reading the Gospels
Wright is sometimes unfairly critical of pre-modern readings, occasionally if not
consistently dismissing two millennia of Christian interpretation as unfortunate and
wrongheaded.
71
Wright is too well-trained, too thoughtful, and too charitable to fail to see that
the concerns leading him to the Gospels simply could not have occurred to ancient and medieval
exegetes. How is it, then, that he sometimes seems to overlook the fact that most if not all of the
questions he seeks to answer were out-and-out unaskable before the Enlightenment,
72
and even
now remain beyond the reach of most Christians? How can he expect readers without his
scholarly resources to see Jesus actions and words in the way that his own training prepares him
to do? More to the point, if, as Wright suggests, pre-modern Christians seriously distorted the
Gospels, does that not necessarily imply that they distorted the gospel as well? I am sure Wright

70
Wright, JVG, 11.
71
Earlier this year, Wright gave a lecture entitled:
72
In terms of medieval Christianity, Rowan Williams (Why Study the Past?: The Quest for the Historical Church
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005], 18) states it precisely: no one thought in terms of historical process,
structurally or intellectually.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
14
does not mean to suggest the post-apostolic church ran off the rails but his rhetoric at times
suggests this, nonetheless.
73

The ancient church (with the Spirit) decided for a fourfold Gospel, rejecting both
Marcions and Tatians proposalsand Pentecostals believe present-day Christians have to
respect this decision, not only in theory but in practice. A methodology that insists on reading the
Gospels in this way assumes that the Gospel writers (and redactors and canonizers) did not
distort the truth about Jesus, but that the apostolic witness, interpretative though it may be, is of
a piece with the event itself.
74
We can no more separate Jesus from the witness to him than we
can separate the head from the body. For this reason, we have to accept the adequacy of the final,
canonical form of the text,
75
including the fourfold Gospels, with all of their real differences and
(seeming) contradictions. As Rowan Williams has said, the Evangelists must be constantly re-
read in counterpoint with each other, and at no time can we leave off this way of reading,
seeking out some comfortable resting-place behind or between the Gospels.
76
We have to
trust that as we read the fourfold Gospel remain attuned to the literary and theological glory of
each Gospel we position ourselves to encounter the risen Lord.
77
Hauerwas makes the case that
each Gospel has told us what we need to know to be transformed into a follower of Jesus
What do we need beyond this? To be sure, historical-critical research can help make sense of
what the Gospels say, but it must not pose a more determinative historical explanation for what
must have really been going on, for to make such a move is to play false to the gospel.
78


What Has Nazareth to do with Nicea?: The Normativity of the Creedal Tradition
Let me be clear. Wright correctly insists that the Scripture can and should inform
Christian dogmatics at every point,
79
and that without historical investigation of the factuality of

73
I suspect this has to do with the fact that many of Wrights dialogue partners (Borg, Crossan, Dunn, Vermes, et.
al.) hold Hellenized Christianity in such despite.
74
Christopher A. Brown, More than Affirmation: The Incarnation as Judgment, in Radner and Sumner (eds.), The
Rule of Faith, 85.
75
See, for example, Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 228; and Robby Waddell, The Spirit of the Book
of Revelation, 101.
76
Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 55.
77
Hays, Knowing Jesus, 55.
78
Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), 20-21.
79
To see perhaps the best example from Wrights own work of constructively critiquing the Christian doctrinal
tradition, consider his explanation of the doctrine of the communion of saints. N.T. Wright, For All the Saints?:
Remembering the Christian Departed (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2003).
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
15
the Gospels, the story is vacuous.
80
Careful, historically-informed exegesis of Scripture is
needed to tell us what we should mean when we confess belief in God, the Father Almighty
the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son [and] the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of
Life. We have to fill out what is missing in the creed, as well, paying attention, e.g. to the call of
Abraham, the Exodus story, the giving of Torah, the establishing of the Davidic line, the
prophets foretelling of the coming Kingdom of God. Wright is wise to insist that the creeds
cannot be confessed faithfully without the witness of Scripture, and historical-critical exegesis of
Scripture belongs to this process.
That said, as Pentecostals we also can and must allow the creed to inform and
direct our readings of the canonical texts. Just as it is impossible to rightly identify the
Lord of the creeds apart from the Scriptures, it is impossible to identify the Jesus of
the Scriptures without the creeds, in spite of what Wright seems to think. Historical-
critical exegesis details what the promise of the Kingdom was taken to mean in Jesus
day, but only the churchs confession of Jesus Christ as the Fathers Spirit-baptized Son
can reveal the identity of the king whose rule means salvation and peace for all creation.
Therefore, in spite of what Wright sometimes suggests, the churchs confessional
tradition is not superfluous, not an alien and obscure imposition. On this score, many if
not all Pentecostals
81
would agree with Robert Jensons rule: when we ask about the
identity of Jesus, historical and systematic questions cannot be separated. Any
reconstruction of a historical Jesus that does not make Nicene sense must be rejected.
82

This is not by any means a concession to the notion that we can remain indifferent to the
facticity of Jesus pre-resurrection career, or to act as if questions of history are finally beside the

80
Hays, Knowing Jesus, 61.
81
It is not lost on me that many Pentecostals do not read the Scriptures in light of the dogmatic tradition, do not hold
to the creeds as hermeneutical key, or insist on the primacy and sufficiency of Word and Sacrament. In effect, on
that score some (perhaps many) Pentecostals show themselves inheritors of the Baptistic tradition, and strike a
position similar to Wrights, in practice if not in theory. In my opinion, we Pentecostals should regard the
confessional, dogmatic tradition as inseparably bound up with the Scriptures. At least a few early Pentecostals (e.g.
G.F. Taylor and J.H. King of the PH church) believed that the confessional tradition was in some sense normative
for Pentecostals, as for all Christians, and I am encouraged that a growing number of contemporary Pentecostals are
acknowledging this, as well. Taylor (PHA 15.21 [Sept 17, 1931], pp. 1, 8) acknowledged the need for doctrinal
guides by which the Scriptures may be interpreted and that these guides were established by the early church
fathers. In the same vein, he spoke (PHA 15.23 [Oct 1, 1931], pp. 1, 4) of the creeds as ancient landmarks
that must not be removed. See also Kings interpretation of Prov. 8.22-32 in PHA 20.13 (July 30, 1936), pp. 3, 9.
82
And any purportedly Nicene account of Jesus person and work that violates the facts as we know them must be
discarded, as well.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
16
point.
83
Instead, it is a confession that the only way to get at the historical truth is to work with
the Christological and Trinitarian teaching of the church.
84
As Hays puts it, the historical figure
of Jesus cannot be rightly known or understood apart from the epistemological insight articulated
precisely in the confession that Jesus is LordJesus is the kyrios.
85
The churchs confessions
are nothing less than a necessary hermeneutical principle of historical reading because without
the confessional tradition, whatever its limitations, we cannot get at the the true ontology of
historical being.
86
Wright apparently believes that Jesus is objective, available to historical
research and reconstruction in the same way as, say, John the Baptist, or, Julian of Norwich. Up
to a point, he is correct to do so. However, if the church is right in identifying Christ as the
eternal Word, then even the historical truth of Jesus belongs in its own category.
87
His earthly
career, his life in the flesh, simply exceeds historiography.
88
Only with the help of the churchs
dogmas can we begin to rightly understand who Jesus was and is.
89
History, even at its most
faithful and productive, can only do so much. It is always a servant, never a lord.

Gospel-Truth and Gospel-Method: Reflections on Epistemology
If we hope to remain true to the gospel, we must not look for Jesus identity in back of
the story, still less make it up by means of extraneous analytical schemes.
90
God does not
intend us to find him in that way. Frei overstates his case against the reliability of historical Jesus

83
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (Vol 1, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 232.
84
Jenson, Identity, Jesus, and Exegesis, 48.
85
Hays, Knowing Jesus, 60.
86
Jenson, Identity, Jesus, and Exegesis, 50. In his presentation at the 2010 Wheaton Theological Conference,
Hays brought this to Wrights attention, but Wright (Response to Richard Hays, 64) did not find it persuasive: I
therefore find my heart strangely chilled by Richards quotation from Robert Jenson. I am nowhere near so
interested in the true ontology of historical being as I am in the inauguration of the kingdom of God. This seems
to me a clear case of false dichotomizing.
87
Hays (Knowing Jesus, 61) explains it well: Precisely because the churchs dogma names the truth about
history in a way that secularist history is bound to miss.
88
Jenson (Identity, Jesus, and Exegesis, 49) is right, It does not detract from the necessity of historical-critical
research to note that simple identification of the historical Jesus with any critically obtainable reconstruction will
not do for Christian theology. For such an identification depends on a radically idealist notion of historicalunless
the historical-critical investigation in question is in the mind of God, or is one that humans could continue forever
The Jesus who occupied time and space with us surely did much that is not recoverable by historians.
89
Again, this is not to adopt anything like a Bultmannian position, or even the ecclesiological construct put
forward by John Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997),
145-68.
90
Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1975), p. 138.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
17
research,
91
but he is right to avow the Gospel story as the divinely-given access to the risen
Jesus. Given that the Christian tradition has maintained at every point that Christ can only be
known only as God the Spirit makes him known in the foolishness of preaching and in the
breaking of bread, then how can we deny that the Scriptures do not get in the way, do not
obscure our vision of the real Jesus. Precisely by the faithful reading and preaching of the
Scripture and celebration of the sacraments we see and hear Jesus as he is (and was)and
we simply cannot now see and hear him in any other reliable way, nor do we need to. Christs
identity is revealed not to the one who masters the historical record but to the one disciplined
in the Churchs lively witness to the Gospel.
92
As Childs explains, The gospel writers constantly
make it clear that the person and work of Jesus were such that his identity and mystery [are] both
revealed and concealed. Knowledge of the truth [is] tied to faithful response.
93
Jesus told the
apostles he had to go away before the Spirit could be poured out on the community of
believers. Perhaps something like that is true of the Gospels, as well? Perhaps only when we
allow the historical Jesus to go away is the Spirit free to come to the Scriptures, enlivening
them as Gods word for us? Perhaps only then Christ can truly come to us and make his home
among us, as he promised?
As a positive example, I call on the reflections of Elisabeth Sisson, an early Pentecostal
evangelist and lay theologian. On the strength of her reading of John 5.30 (I can of mine own
self do nothing ), she argues that in his incarnational kenosis Jesus renounced the power of
His own [divine] being, submitting himself entirely to the Fathers will. Drawing on Isa. 18.19-

91
Frei (The Identity of Jesus Christ, 103) asks, But do we actually know that much about Jesus? Certainly not, if
we are asking about the actual man apart from the story. But that is not our concern. Whether indeed the
historical Jesus intended the crucifixion and in what sense, whether he went freely to his death and with what
motives, we cannot infer directly from the available evidence ... But the resurrection is not, of course, an event
subject to critical historical judgment; and even if taken at face value, it, by itself, tells us little about the internal
history of Jesus. We are, in fact, thrown back on the story simply as a story The testimony we have is not of a
detailed sort. It does not light up the motives, the decision-making process, the internal ambiguities, or the
personality of the storys chief protagonist.
92
This is not to say that Jesus is myth or that his life (and even his intentions and self-understanding) lies entirely
beyond the scope of historical study. The truth of Christ is more than an object, but not less. The historians work
can be and often is put to use by the Spirit to guide the reading of Scripture, preaching, prayer, and the celebration of
the sacraments.
93
Brevard S. Childs, The Nature of the Christian Bible: One Book, Two Testaments in Ephraim Radner and
George Sumner (eds.), The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age (Harrisburg, PA:
Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 121.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
18
21 and Heb. 1.3, Sisson portrays Jesus as the emptiness which let in the fulness of the seal or
stamp of Gods nature.
94

So Christ in His mortal life perpetually gave place in His emptiness to the fulness of the
Father. He renounced all independent thought or action, and just let, so to speak, God the
Key, turn in Christ the Lock; God the Ball, play in Christ the Socket. Thus does God say
of Him delightedly, seeing His utter self-abnegation, Who is blind but My Servant? or
deaf as My Messenger that I sent?
95


Sisson believes Christs flesh was sinful flesh, that he participated in fallen human
nature. She contends Jesus had to live life as very man of very man as well as very God of
very God, for only in this way could he stand in the sinners stead, feeling the pressure of a
sin-broken nature, and getting the sinners victory, that is through grace, and not because of
inherent strength, over that nature. How could Christ live sinlessly if he was subject to the
sinners nature? By living as an emptiness, doing nothing of or from his own will. He lived a
fully human life, but he never live[d] in His humanity, never move[d] from it for one single
instant
96
He was the full overcomer because he, Himself the omnipotent God,
97
lived in
the flesh, against the flesh, above the flesh. Because he was willing to do nothingnot even
Gods work of redeeming creationof his own will, Jesus lived the divine life in the human
nature.
98
In a striking move, she reads his agony in the garden as a request to be delivered not
from the cross but from a premature death, before He had come to the place and hour of His
sacrificial offering.
99
He had to become willing, Sisson believes, to give up the holy call to
die for a wrecked world, and not allow even his loving compassion to determine his course of
action. With a certain knowledge that His sacrificial death was a lost worlds only life, [Christ
had to be willing] to give that sacrifice all up if such be the will of God.
100
To truly achieve
the nothingness he was called to, the Lord had to be willing to drop out of human life with
nothing accomplished. Only in that way would he be prepared to in fact do the work of dying
for the world.
101


94
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 21.
95
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 21.
96
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 18.
97
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 18.
98
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 20.
99
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 19.
100
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 19.
101
LRE 10.3 (July 1911), 21.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
19
Whatever the faults of her theological formulations, Sisson provides an example of how
to think as a Pentecostal Christian about the problem of Jesus self-understanding. Her basic
methodology deserves imitation. First, she reads the Scripture canonically, allowing Scripture to
interpret Scripture. (She even allows Isaiah to speak directly of Jesus self-understanding!)
Second, she insists on the narrative authenticity of Jesus decisions to follow the Fathers will,
working (creatively!) within the framework of Nicene and Chalcedonian Christology. Third, she
keeps the application of her reflections always in mind. This, in my judgment, is exactly as it
should be.

Grappling with Jesus Self-Understanding
We come face-to-face at last with Wrights proposals about Jesus self-understanding.
What are we, as Pentecostals, to make of them? I do not think we should dismiss them, even if
we cannot agree to them without qualification. Instead, we should grapple with them, allowing
them to wound us, if necessary, so we can receive the promised blessing. They are worth the
trouble because (1) they forcefully express what it meant for Jesus to live from faith into faith,
how it is that he opened the way of perfect obedience, and, (2) they afford immense significance
to the story of Jesus (and, more broadly, the story of God and creation). This should appeal to us
as Pentecostals, not only because we know our lives as storied,
102
but also because our way of
being-in-the-world is a form of imitatio Christia way of life that simply makes no sense if
Jesus is not the exemplar as well as the executor of salvation.
103
We have to agree with Wright
that the narrative integrity of the Gospels (and the gospels) story must be maintained. It cannot
be ruined by thinking or talking of Jesus as if he lived on a kind of auto-pilot, as if he were not

102
Jesus Christ came down in order that He might bring back and restore the fellowship and communion with the
divine. It had been lost in the fall; man had lost it because he had sinned, and the Holy Spirit could not come into a
sinful life or a sinful heart. Therefore God made a body for Himself and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among
us. And the blessed, divine Spirit entered into that body and sanctified it and enabled the Lord Jesus Christ in His
humanity to go through this world, to resist every temptation, to give Himself a ransom for the sins of the whole
world. He died on Calvary and was resurrected by the same divine Holy Spirit and was exalted to the right hand of
God the Father (PE [Oct 20, 1923)], 5). This description is also dramatically akin to the creeds second article, as
well.
103
There can be no doubt that Pentecostals do hold to an exemplaristic Christology. As an early (woman)
Pentecostal preacher put it, He has not only gone [to the right hand of God] as Victor, but He has sent forth His
Holy Spirit to you and me to give us the power to live the life He livedthe life of union with Him (Confidence
7.8 [July 1915], 131).
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
20
really tempted,
104
as if he were not in fact agonizing in the olive grove, as if he did not in fact
feel himself abandoned on Golgotha. Unlike Wright, we should attempt to say this in ways that
are self-consciously faithful to the Christian theological tradition, as well.

Re-imagining Jesus Obedience & Faith(fullness)
While everyone agrees that Jesus lived a life of obedience, no dogma has been set down
about whether or not Jesus lived from faith. Scripture says comparatively little about Jesus faith,
although Hebrews 12.2 is seems clear enough
105
and the general tenor of Hebrews and the
Synoptic Gospels harmonize with it. In the history of doctrine, some theologians (among them,
Athanasius of Alexandria
106
and St Thomas) have insisted Jesus could not have lived from faith
because he enjoyed unbroken and unbreakable communion with the Father. St Thomas argued
that Jesus enjoyed the beatific vision throughout his human life,
107
and much of the Roman
Catholic tradition followed him in this, at least until recently.
108
Such a claim means, as Gerald
O Collins recognizes, that Jesus lived by sight, not faith,
109
making it impossible to speak of
Jesus experiencing anything like risk. Others, conversely, have held and do hold that Jesus did in
fact live from faith, even if he were never really at risk of failing in his vocation.

Apparently, this

104
And the Son takes all the praise and adoration and presents it unto His Father; for God must be all and in. And
He will submit all to HIS Father. The Son submitted Himself to His Father. The Father could trust none else. Lucifer
failed, and Jehovah dare not trust any other archangel. He trusted His only begotten Son, Him who was Son of man.
By His faithfulness as Son of God and also Son of man, He exalted man to an inconceivably high position (CE
290-291 [May 31, 1919], p. 8).
105
OCollins (Christology, 263) points out that an unwillingness to entertain any attribution of faith to Jesus has
clearly affected the translation of certain New Testament passages which might be construed as presenting Jesus as a
model for our faith. Thus, the Revised Standard Version translated a key phrase from Hebrews 12: 2 as Jesus the
pioneer and perfecter of our faith, even though the original Greek text does not include our. The 1978 New
International Version followed suit, by rendering the phrase Jesus, the Pioneer and Perfecter of our faith. The 1989
New Revised Standard Version has kept the same translation. The 1985 New Jerusalem Bible makes a similar
addition and impression by translating the phrase as Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection.
106
See Ian G. Wallis, the Faith of Jesus Christ in Early Christian Traditions (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 208-210.
107
OCollins (Christology, 266-68) has provided what I take to be a persuasive rebuttal of this idea.
108
For a defense of these positions, see F. Ocariz, L.F. Mateo Seco, and J.A. Riestra, The Mystery of Jesus Christ
(Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 1994).
109
Gerald OCollins and Daniel Kendall, Focus On Jesus: Essays in Christology and Soteriology (Herefordshire:
Fowler Wright Books, 1996), 13. For my part, I agree with Galot (Who is Christ?, 354): There is no basis for the
claim that Jesus enjoyed the beatific vision during his mortal life, for neither Scripture nor the Patristic Tradition
attest to it.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
21
was the position of most of the Patristics,
110
and it is the stance taken by the majority of
Pentecostals, as well.
For us, then, Wrights untraditional theory of Jesus self-awareness raises a pressing
question: How (if at all) could Jesus have lived from faith while knowing himself as the second
identity of the Trinity? Is it possible for Pentecostals to embrace Wrights best insights without
losing touch with their own spirituality and the larger confessional and spiritual tradition? How
best to square an emphasis on Jesus faith with Pentecostal spirituality, on the one hand, and the
Nicene and Chalcedonian descriptions of Jesus identity, on the other hand? Is it possible to talk
of Jesus faith as risky without violating the integrity of the scriptural witness or trespassing the
boundaries of the regula fidei? In short, is it possible to adapt Wrights account of Jesus self-
understanding that remains Nicenely-sensible and robustly Pentecostal?

Sight as Faith: A Third Possibility?
In short, I think the answer is Yes. Consider the reflections of Mary Boddy, wife of the
Anglican vicar, Alexander A. Boddy. In an early Confidence article, she puzzles over Heb. 5.8,
seeking to explain how Christ, who was always absolutely abandoned to His Fathers will,
could nonetheless learn obedience. She explains that obedience is not only carrying out
commands, but in its higher forms is a carrying out of ever more difficult tasks with an
increasing delight in pleasing God. Jesus, then, moved from faith to faith, in a sense,
graduating from one realm of perfect obedience to another. Jesus submitted himself again and
again to the Fathers will, until his faith climaxed in the supreme act of obedience of death on
the cross.
111
Through it all, the source of Jesus marvellous endurance and submission was his
implicit and perfect faith in His Father, which never once wavered.
112
His perfect faith and
obedience radiated out from the infinite love and understanding that existed between him and
his Father.
113


110
Wallis (The Faith of Jesus Christ in Early Christian Traditions, 215) argues that in spite of notable exceptions,
apostolic and patristic Christians on the whole did recognize Christ as living by faith: It may not be going too far to
claim that Jesus faith was thought to be the basis of his encounter with God and, by implication, of other peoples
encounters as well. He goes on (p. 220) to argue that early Christians reflection on Jesus faith may well have
been the start of Christological reflection in that it was the profundity of his faith which revealed the graciousness of
God in his performance of kingdom miracles and in his obedience to the point of death.
111
Confidence 7.9 (June 1915), 110.
112
Confidence 7.9 (June 1915), 111.
113
Confidence 7.9 (June 1915), 111.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
22
As these reflections make clear, Boddy, unlike Wright, assumes that Jesus did know
himself as God the Son, but she does not see this as in any way cheapening or impossibilizing his
faith. In her construal, the Sons oneness with the Father is nothing less than the source and
content of his faith! She does not put it in these terms, but evidently she believes there exists a
kind of faith that is neither sight nor blind trust. For her, Jesus pre-Easter faith was of a
third kind. She also goes on to say that Christians are called to live in this kind of faith. For her,
apparently, faith is sight, although not the kind of sight that comes only in the End.
In many ways, her view parallels that of Gerald OCollins. He argues that Jesus knew
rather than believeGod, his own divine identity, and redemptive mission,
114
but maintains
that Jesus did in fact live from faith because he hoped for what he did not yet see, namely, his
resurrection, the beatific vision, and the redemption of all things.
115
Jesus faith, then, is
analogous to the faith of his followers, not identical with it.
116
Both OCollins and Boddy would
reject the notion that Jesus was ever at risk: he could not sin, could not fail in his mission.
This view strikes one as a kind of via media between Thomas position, on one extreme,
and Wrights, on the other. It manages to make easier (less-tortured) sense of more of the biblical
witnesses, primarily because it takes the Fourth Gospels high Christology as deriving directly
from Jesus own self-descriptions, while the radical view has to either read this Christology in
unconventional waysremember Wrights interpretation of Jn 17or read the Gospel as putting
in Jesus mouth what the church came to believe about him only after the fact. Is it enough for
Jesus faith to be merely analogous to our faith? Is it enough for him to have faith that is not
risky? These questions raise the second option.

Faith, Authenticity, and Narrative
As we have seen, Wright is able to make radical claims about Jesus faith, but only by
more or less bracketing out Johns Gospel and the confessional tradition. The question remains,
then: Is it (Nicenely and Pentecostally) possible to construct a radical view of Jesus faith? A
view that holds his faith as more than merely analogous to ours? A view that sees Jesus as really
at risk in his career?

114
O Collins, Christology, 275.
115
O Collins, Christology, 278.
116
O Collins, Christology, 278-80. E.g. before the first Easter, Jesus did not know and so could believe that God
would raise him from the dead. However, he had already come to know what Christians now believe about his
identity as God the Son.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
23
If such a construction is to be attempted, a major problem has to be addressed right away:
How can Christ be God the Son incarnate and not know that he is? How can the Truth believe
something untrue about himself? Galot expresses the point clearly:
Jesus unquestionably had to live in the psychological truth of what he really was. He
could not have been ignorant of his true identity or been mistaken about it during the
years of his childhood and youth. If by virtue of the Incarnation the Son of God became
humanly conscious of himself, this consciousness could have no other object than his
innermost personhood. His psychological development could not have consisted in a
transition away from awareness of his human identity to the discovery of his divine
identity. It had to be a gradual increase and deepening of his human consciousness that he
was indeed the Son of God ... [H]ow could he have been ignorant of the central truth
around which his whole message was to take shape?
117


Suppose for the sake of the integrity and authenticity of Jesus mission as both executor
and exemplar of salvation that he were allowed not to know his true identity. Is it impossible to
imagine that the nature of the mission required Jesus to live from a limited self-awareness,
maybe even a kind of self-unawareness, a unique form of self-forgetting self-awareness? What if
JesusGod the Son incarnated as a first-century Palestinian Jewwas constitutionally
incapable of answering the question, Who do I say I am? in terms other than these: I am the
personal embodiment of the kingdom, the Fathers will? Take the problem of Wittgensteins
talking lion. Perhaps the language of divine identity is simply not translatable to the human
experience of self-awareness? Perhaps the One constituted by eternal and infinite inter-
dependence on the Father and the Spirit cannot know himself as the Son when his life is
expressed under the conditions of a genuinely humanand so temporal and finiteexistence?
Undoubtedly, Jesus self-awareness was unique. Is it possible that God orchestrated it so that
Jesus one-of-a-kind psychology and self-awareness would make possible a faith exactly like that
possible for us?
This does not imply that Christ believed a lie, only that the truth he knew was limited by
the conditions of his worldly existence and the Fathers purposes to establish Jesus as both the
one whom people should believe in and the one they should believe like. In this account, Jesus
would have thought of himselftruly, but incompletelyas Marys son and Israels messiah,
conceived and born miraculously,
118
uniquely intimate with YHWY and energized by YHWYs
Spirit. In other words, Jesus would have thought of himself in much the way Wright suggests he

117
Jean Galot, Who is Christ?: A Theology of Incarnation (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989), 338-39.
118
Assuming that Mary did share with Jesus her version of the story of his conception and birth.
Chris Green, Who Do I Say I Am
24
did. If this seems bizarre, remember Christians already accept that Jesus experienced something
like this, albeit only at the end, in his dying breath. Was his dereliction not a moment in which
God turned away from him?
119
As George MacDonald put it, God withdrew, as it were, that
the perfect Will of the Son might arise and go forth to find the Will of the Father.
120
Is it
unthinkable, then, that Jesus entire pre-resurrection life was lived in a similar withdrawal? If
not, then much of what Wright claims can be put to good use.
This view dramatically intensifies Jesus need for the Spirits paracletic ministry. In this
view, the boundary conditions of incarnate existence required Christ to depend entirely on the
Spirits wisdom and power so that Jesus becomes the Spirit-led man, par excellence. In and
through the Spirits inspiration, he discerns the thoughts of peoples hearts and works his signs
and wonders. By the Spirits illumination, he reads the Scriptures rightly, and comes to see
himself as the servant of YHWY. By the Spirits intercession, he prays faithfully, calling on his
Father. Needless to say, this puts a dramatic emphasis on his receiving of the Spirit at his
baptism, an emphasis perfectly in keeping with the Pentecostal tradition.

Conclusions
Perhaps Wright would not be happy with these Pentecostal adaptations of his claims, but
both Boddys moderate and Sissons radical understanding of Jesus self-awareness address a
couple of his basic concerns: they provide a way of handling thorny texts, such as Mt. 24.36 and
Mk 13.32 (No one knows the day or the hour not even the Son), and they protect the
narrative integrity of Jesus story, refusing, for example, to treat the Lords Gethsemane prayer
as a charade (i.e. Jesus will was not really in conflict with the Fathers: he only wanted to make
it seem as if it were). Most importantly, they manage to do this without adopting Wrights
methodology.



119
This holds even if one were to say Jesus only felt that he was abandoned.
120
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons (New York: Cosimo Books, 2007), 86.

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